Chapter 5 5

His mouth found hers without hesitation, without the desperate anger of their first kiss or the furtive hunger of his office. This was something else-deliberate, reverent, devastating in its tenderness.

Ethan's lips moved over hers like he was learning her, mapping the shape of her mouth, the texture of her skin. His tongue traced the seam of her lips, asking permission, and when she opened for him he made a sound-low, broken, utterly unlike the controlled man she thought she knew-and deepened the kiss with a thoroughness that left her dizzy.

Kiera's hands found his shoulders, his neck, the short hair at his nape. She felt the tension coiling there, the effort he was still making to hold back, and she dug her fingers in, pulling him closer, arching into him with a need that matched his own.

He walked her backward. She felt the shift in temperature as her spine met the refrigerator door, the cold metal shocking against her heated skin through the thin silk of her dress. Ethan pressed against her, pinning her there, and she felt every hard line of him-the belt buckle digging into her stomach, the evidence of his arousal against her hip, the rapid rise and fall of his chest as he broke the kiss to trail his mouth down her throat.

"Ethan-"

"Let me." The words were muffled against her collarbone, his breath hot and damp. "Just-let me-"

His teeth grazed the tendon of her neck, not quite biting, and she gasped, her head falling back against the refrigerator with a thud she barely registered. His hands were moving, sliding down her sides, lifting her slightly so she could wrap her legs around his waist, and the new position brought him exactly where she needed him, pressure and friction and the promise of so much more.

She felt his fingers at her thigh, rough and callused against her stockings, and reality intruded like ice water.

The revenge. The lie. The name she was wearing like a stolen coat.

"Wait." She pushed at his shoulders, the movement weak, unconvincing. "Ethan, wait-"

He stopped. Immediately, completely, his hands going still on her body, his face lifting from where he'd been pressing open-mouthed kisses to the swell of her breast above her neckline. His eyes were dark, blown wide with desire, but she saw the control returning, the discipline reasserting itself like armor being donned piece by piece.

"I'm sorry." His voice was rough, scraped raw. "I shouldn't-I lost-" He stepped back, his hands falling to his sides, and she watched him struggle for composure, for the distance he needed to be the man he thought he should be. "This is too fast. You're right to stop. I-"

"I'm not stopping." The words came out before she could think them through, driven by something deeper than strategy, more urgent than revenge. "I'm just-" She didn't know how to finish. I'm lying to you about everything. I'm using you to hurt someone else. I'm not who you think I am.

She said none of it.

Instead, she reached for him, her hand finding his, her fingers threading through his. "I'm here," she said, which was true in ways that mattered and false in ways that didn't. "I'm not going anywhere."

Ethan looked at their joined hands. His thumb moved, slowly, tracing the line of her knuckles, the pale skin of her wrist where her pulse still hammered. "I need you to be sure," he said. "Not tonight. Not because of-" He gestured vaguely at the space between them, at the desire still thick in the air. "I need to know that when you wake up tomorrow, you'll still want this. Want me."

Kiera thought of Kayden. Of Sloane. Of the blank message she'd sent and the satisfaction she'd felt, brief and hollow, at the thought of his confusion.

Then she looked at Ethan-really looked at him-and saw the vulnerability beneath the uniform, the loneliness of a man who'd given everything to service and kept nothing for himself.

"I'm sure," she said, and meant it more than she'd meant anything in months.

His smile was small, almost shy, transforming his face from handsome to something approaching beautiful. He lifted her hand to his mouth, pressing a kiss to her palm that felt more intimate than anything that had come before.

"Then we do this right," he said. "Dinner. Conversation. The things normal people do when they're-" He paused, searching for the word.

"Falling for each other?" Kiera supplied.

His ears turned pink. She filed the detail away, charmed despite herself. "When they're serious," he corrected. "I want to know you, Chasity. The real you. Not the performance. Not the seduction. You."

The name hit her like a slap. She kept her expression steady, her smile fixed, even as something cold settled in her stomach. "Of course," she said. "Ask me anything."

So he did. They moved to the couch, no longer stiff and unwelcoming but somehow transformed by the shift between them, and he asked about her favorite foods (she invented preferences based on Chasity's Instagram), her allergies (none, but she claimed pollen to seem delicate), her family (complicated, she said truthfully, if not in the way he understood).

He listened with an intensity that was almost unnerving, his gaze sharp, as if committing every detail to memory. No cilantro. Sensitive to lilies. Tea, not coffee. Each preference was a piece of intel, a parameter for a mission he was determined not to fail.

"You're very attentive," she observed, her voice light despite the panic fluttering in her chest.

"I want to get this right," he said, his eyes never leaving hers. "You. Us."

Kiera stood abruptly. "Bathroom," she managed. "Where-?"

He pointed. She fled, closing the door behind her with a click that seemed too loud, too final.

The face in the mirror was a stranger's-flushed, bright-eyed, wearing an expression that looked dangerously like happiness. Kiera turned on the faucet, the water cold enough to hurt, and splashed it against her cheeks until her skin stung.

This wasn't the plan. The plan was seduction, exploitation, a calculated climb into the Christensen family that would culminate in Kayden's humiliation. The plan didn't involve Ethan looking at her like she mattered. It didn't involve her wanting, desperately, to deserve that look.

She gripped the edge of the sink, her knuckles white, and stared at her reflection until the stranger's face dissolved into her own-harder, colder, marked by the choices that had brought her here.

"You're doing this for a reason," she whispered. "Remember the reason."

She dried her hands, straightened her dress, and painted her smile back on. When she emerged, Ethan was at the window, his phone to his ear, his silhouette sharp against the darkening sky.

He turned when he heard her, and his expression-open, hopeful, utterly unguarded-nearly broke her.

"That was my sister," he said. "Eliza. I told her I'd met someone. Someone important."

Kiera's smile didn't waver. "What did she say?"

"She said-" He crossed to her, his hand finding hers, his thumb tracing the same pattern he'd made earlier. "She said she couldn't wait to meet you."